Katherine Johnson -- NASA's Human Computer

By Viveka Mehrotra

Katherine Johnson was an African American mathematician born in 1918. The county where she lived did not have a high school for African American ch ildren, so at 10 years old, she was sent to the campus of the University of West Virginia to finish her education. At age 18, she graduated college with degrees in mathematics and French.

In 1953, she started working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and helped break gender and racial barriers in her workplace. Before the widespread use of computers, she and other black people working at the office essentially became human computers, and were referred to as the "colored computing pool".

At NASA, Johnson made critical calculations helping to send the first Americans into space. She determined the flight trajectory for Alan Shepard's spaceship in 1961, and John Glenn's Earth orbit in 1962. She most famously made crucial contributions to the flight trajectory for the Apollo 11 moon landing, and countless other missions and plans. In her later career, she worked tirelessly to encourage young women of color to study in STEM fields.

In her honor, a film, "Hidden Figures" was made about her and her colleagues' work at NASA. In 2015, she was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama, and NASA named one of its research facilities after her. After her death in 2020, her legacy lives on through her pivotal role in breaking gender and racial barriers as well as her tireless work as a mathematician.